Teal is Nice but Lavender is Better

So, I worked a bit more on the whitework on my birth sampler and just couldn’t stop thinking about how much I wanted it to be lavender.  This is especially because all of the pictures I’ve seen of my new neice look like pink threw up all over her.  She’s still cute, but her parents are obviously into the pink girly colors.  I don’t particularly care for pink though, and since lavender is one of my favorite colors, I figured it was a good compromise.

So, Friday night I got in a mood and pulled out all of the teal ribbon.  This involved removing tons of beads… one by one because they were stitched over the teal ribbon.  I got all of the ribbon replaced Saturday morning… then the beads…. then I realize that her name is off center by two stitches and will have to be frogged and redone. Plus I think the letters look kind of bumpy since I used two threads instead of one because I didn’t think it was easy to read with the one thread.  I think I forgot to chart the “y” in her name and that is why… although I remembered to stitch it with the y.

Yes, I realize that I’m being a bit obsessive about this piece…

So here it is….lavender…

I did the best I could on picking a matching floss color…. there didn’t seem to be anything exactly the same shade as the ribbon, so I went with 210.

Now I am happy with it.

I have such great friends!

I’ve had a pretty tough week….  those of you who know will understand just how hard it has been for me.

Today my friend Emily met me for lunch and magically, my appetite came back and I didn’t feel sick after eating.

When I got home, I had a package from my friend Susan, who sent me a sweet card and this beautiful project bag that she made with  my favorite color:

It’s about 11″ x 14″, and as you can see it has a matching zipper and is fully lined. It is also made with some fusible interfacing to help it keep its shape. Now I just have to figure out which project will go in it!

Sweetheart Tree Finish and Opinions Needed!

I finally finished up the Sweetheart Tree Stitcher’s Favorite Biscornu last night!

I modified the back, as I normally do if the back is a repeat of the front. I also usually like to do a beaded edge on my biscornus, but I had some leftover teeny buttons and decided I wanted those on the corners, so just stitched up the edges without beads. I’m pretty happy with it! I also stitched up the matching fob as part of the 2009 Christmas Ornament Project:

So…. my brother and his wife are having their first baby girl (after 3 boys) later this month and I was suddenly struck by the desire to do a birth sampler for her. Her name will be Sadie Grace and she’ll be my first neice. So, of course, I immediately thought of the Victoria Sampler Heirloom Birth Sampler and remembered that I had started it many years ago and just never finished it. I had started it for a boy, though, and as you can see from the pics below, the “leaves” in the rose wreath at the top are a teal color, and the rest of the color on the piece is a matching teal.  If it had been started for a girl, it was charted with pink leaves with matching pink for the rest of the sampler. I would want to use peach or lavender for a girl, but I’m wondering if I can get away with just using either of these colors for the rest (would replace the teal band, which is just ribbon woven through the hemstitching).  Leaves ARE green/teal, afterall, but I would need to find a way to tie in the peach or lavender used in the rest of the piece to the top wreath.   One idea is to do an additional ribbon rose in the center of the wreath in the right color.  Pulling out the leaves that are already stitched is just not an option….  I’d have to take out the beads too, and I think the fabric would just look terrible…  I’m trying to find a way to NOT have to start over.   The fabric here is actually platinum, but it looks much lighter in real life!

All opinions/advice are appreciated… even if you think I need to just start over!